Publications

Arts Midwest Strategic Plan 2018–2020

Based on extensive input with stakeholders, arts leaders, and program participants, our current strategic plan is reflective of the exciting and complex times in which we live. Arts Midwest looks ahead with optimism to our future and to fulfilling our mission and vision for our region and beyond.

Creating Connection

Arts Midwest and Metropolitan Group are working on a long-term initiative to make arts and culture a more recognized, valued, and expected part of everyday life. As part of that effort, we undertook a national research project to understand public values, behaviors, and attitudes as they relate to arts and culture. The findings and recommendations from this research are detailed in the document below.

Capacity building and resilience: What participants learned through ArtsLab

This publication provides key insights on leadership development and takeaways for grantmakers that inform both the field of organizational development, as well as the larger field of arts and culture. Offering a glimpse into ArtsLab’s impact, the report identifies the promising professional development practices that catalyze enduring change.

Global Positioning Strategy for the Arts

Cultural exchange can have a positive impact on everything from U.S. foreign policy to commerce to our growth as individual participants in a global society. It creates an environment for more effective diplomacy, enriches the education of our children, builds greater acceptance of different cultures within our borders, and prepares us to fully participate in the global economy and society.

Drawing on their own international expertise, the six U.S. Regional Arts Organizations have collaborated on this report to provide a resource to the Obama administration as it develops new initiatives in arts and culture.

The View From Here Exhibition Catalog

The View From Here: Recent Pictures from Central Europe and the American Midwest featured 84 photography and photo-based works by 22 contemporary artists from Central Europe and the American Midwest. The works ranged in style from traditional documentary to interpretive to conceptual, revealing the parallels and differences between two regions that share both ethnic heritages, and mid-continental locations.

The 120-page full-color, fully illustrated catalog includes all exhibition images, and a contextual essay.

Hard copies available for the cost of shipping.

Illusions of Eden Exhibition Catalog

Now concluded, Illusions of Eden: Visions of the American Heartland brought to audiences a unique examination of the Midwest’s identity as seen through artists’ eyes. Organized around five themes—garden, home, work, word, and journey—the exhibition presented approximately 120 paintings and photographs from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s by artists living or working in the Midwest. This historical work was juxtaposed with four large contemporary installations by Malcolm Cochran, Maya Lin, Mary Lucier, and Kerry James Marshall, all of whom have ties to the Midwest.

The 280-page full-color, fully illustrated catalog for this exhibition includes all exhibition images, plus essays and interviews in English, German, and Hungarian.

Hard copies available for the cost of shipping.

Creating Public Value Through State Arts Agencies

The result of a collaboration between Arts Midwest, The Wallace Foundation, and authors Mark H. Moore and Gaylen Williams Moore, this 128- page publication examines the role of state arts agencies in our culture. Printed on 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper.